10/04/08

Today was the day that we were hopeful to get the generator running again. At this point, we have been out of electricity for two weeks, except for the past Sunday. The two guys that showed up worked all day and around 5:30 they were finished. Roger gave their work his inspection and after about another couple hours of fine tuning their work, they were finished and we began to put the rest of the generator back together and gave it one more inspection. The last thing we wanted was to have a wire scratch the sides of the casing and shoot sparks everywhere like last time. A few minutes later Roger started up the engine and everything was working great. By this time, there was quite a crowd of our teachers, some short term missionaries and a few local Haitians that were standing around in anticipation of getting power back. I had seen Roger standing at the electrical breakers many times before as he switched power back to everyone, but I have never seen a crowd of people standing around as there were that night applauding at the success!

Earlier in the day we had three groups of missionaries come in. One of the groups was from my home church. It was great to see them all as it has always been a lot of fun to be here with them in the past when I had come on short term trips. Since all of the groups had shown up today, there was even more of a need to have the power turned back on. One of the main concerns is that since Norma cooks their breakfast, lunch and dinner, she needs power to her large kitchen. Also, with school starting up, it is helpful to have power for certain classes. I personally don’t need electricity for teaching, but for other subjects and classes it can be helpful, especially if the students are watching a video.

In a sense, it was good to go without power for so long because I think we all appreciate it so much more now. There are so many things that we use it for. I am also amazed at how God always provides what you need and when you really need it.